Baobab trees are among the exceptional flora that can be found in Madagascar.

A huge country famous for its natural beauty. This country receives relatively occasional tourists despite its links with some of the most visited nations on earth. Madagascar, known officially as the Republic of Madagascar. Is an island nation off the African east coast opposite Mozambique that was a French colony until 1958.

The country of roughly 28.92 million is known as an adventurer’s paradise. Thanks to its national biodiversity, with a range of unique flora and fauna.

Among Madagascar’s various offerings are monkeys, lemurs – sacred to the local population – orchids, and baobab trees.

The country has struggled to recover from the pandemic but is now gathering momentum.

Madagascar only sees a few hundred thousand foreign travelers per year. 

The island has beautiful beaches. 

Before the pandemic, Madagascar was a famous tourist destination with more than 400,000 visitors annually.

But, following its Covid shutdown, it has worked to recover, with the national tourism ministry reporting just 132,018 arrivals.

The total represented foreigners and Malagasy natives residing abroad who returned home. Which was a huge blow to the local economy.

Tourism facing challenges

The tourism industry faces several challenges. The infrastructure lacks diversification, the roads have poor paving, and the expenses of airline travel are high, which can make it unreliable.

Before COVID, Madagascar earned £726m (€849.49m), which is 6.7 percent of the nation’s gross national product.

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Madagascar holds its lemurs as sacred. They are among many tourist draws.

The cash flow collapsed in the years following. The latest figures show that 157,000 people arrived in the first nine months of 2023, which is only a slim improvement.

Local hotel owners think the road to recovery could prove fraught, with Madagascar having undergone tourism obstacles.

Maggie and Sergi Formentin, the proprietors of Lac Hotel Shambavy, stated in December 2023 to Tharawat Magazine that revamping their business post-Covid would be “complicated”.